USA, Bermuda and Canada players offered CPL chance

Up to six U-23 players from the ICC Americas region are being given a chance to play for a Caribbean Premier League development contract for the 2015 CPL season.

USA's Steven Taylor, Canada's Nikhil Dutta and Nitish Kumar, and Bermuda's Tre Manders and Delray Rawlins are among twelve Associate players from the Americas who arrived in Barbados on Sunday for a high performance camp that runs through December 21 and includes three T20 and two 50-over matches against local teams including a Combined Campuses and Colleges XI. At the conclusion of the camp, one player will be assigned to each of the six CPL franchises and invited to a training camp prior to the start of the 2015 CPL season.

Each of the Americas players will then join four West Indies U-19 players in their respective squad camps. Those five players will then compete for a spot in the final 16-man squad for their CPL franchise. Last year's squads were capped at 15 players but the additional roster spot for this year has been created as a development platform for the junior players from the West Indies and the Americas.

"This provides an excellent opportunity for a young player to get a taste of life as a professional cricketer - the travel, the daily practice sessions and the intensity of the actual competition," Michael Hall, CPL Cricket Operations Director, said. "We took the decision based on feedback from the coaches who were involved last year - they all felt that there was enough talent at the U-19 level to warrant creating an additional roster spot for one of them."